Advice on 0w-20 oil - which one?

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4md

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Sofia, Bulgaria
Hello everyone! I can't decide what oil to use in my Prius 2011. The specs says it should be SM-EC SAE 0W-20/ILSAC GF-4 SAE 0W-20, so my options where I live are (the price is for 5 liters):
1. Petronas Syntium 7000 0w-20 ($33)
2. Shell Helix Ultra SN 0w-20 ($51)
3. Total Quartz 9000 Future GF5 0w-20 ($47)
4. Motul 8100 Eco-Lite 0w-20 ($72)
5. Yacco Lube HY 0w-20 ($97)
6. Amsoil Signature Series 0w-20 ($75 for 5 quarts = 4.73 liters)

The first three oils are from our parts supplier with nice discount and the price difference compared to the others is not small.

I read a lot about those oils, mainly on oil-club.ru, compared lab tests, searched for opinions on the forums... I excluded the last three because of the price (read that Amsoil is maybe the best choice). I couldn't find a lot of information about Total, but there are so many people writing about Petronas and Shell (which turned out to be re-branded Pennzoil Platinum 0w-20). Almost everyone says that this Shell/Pennzoil is pretty awesome oil, Petronas is not bad, but is not "cold-proof" as the Shell. The winter temperatures rarely drops bellow -15*C (5*F) so it's not a problem for my climate. The usual summer temps are around 28-30*C, but this year is very hot - sometimes more than 40*C so I put 5w-30 on the last service 4 months ago, but now I'm passing the 10k km OCI and wondering about the oil.

The Prius is 3rd gen, 1.8, bought used with 100k miles on the clock (160k km) 4 months ago. Almost half of those 10k kms were on highways and it burned little oil - about 1/4 between the max-min marks on the dip stick, so it doesn't have the well-known oil burning issue.

My main candidates are Shell and Petronas, what do you think, what's your advice?
 
I'd go with Shell since it seems their products are high quality. Not familiar with Petronas so can't comment on them at all. Can't go wrong with Shell. Use with confidence. It's not the cheapest and not the most expensive either. Sometimes you can get in trouble by buying the cheapest thing. Not always the case, but sometimes it is.
 
Go with what you can afford easily.
Just to answer your question. Number 3, Total is great oil. I use it here.
Same 0w20. I run it out to 10,000 miles often.
 
I have heard of all of them except Yacco. I like Amsoil, and would recommend if you plan to extend your interval.

If not extending then the huge price difference for the Petronas makes it a great choice.
 
Thank you guys! The genuine Toyota oil from my local dealer is the most expensive one and I didn't even included it the list - it's $100 for 5L, from independent resellers it's even more.

Yacco is French company, popular brand in Europe, they have really good products (I'm using their oils in my Citroen, put one of their ATFs in the Prius gearbox when serviced 4 months ago), but they're expensive and I really don't want to invest much in old car like the Prius. One of the main benefits of the brand (except of the quality) is that usually their products are not faked.

Petronas is very large Malaysian corporation, their products are not among the top brands about quality (people say so), but they're very cheap, they usually don't have fakes - because of the low initial price, so a lot of people prefer using their oils, instead overpriced ones that might be fakes. They're partnering with Mercedes in F1 and most of their products are approved by Mercedes to their specifications - MB 229.51/MB 229.52 for Syn 7000 0w-20.

Around here there are A LOT, really a lot of fake oils - mostly Motul, Total, Castrol, etc - the top brands in Europe and you may not believe me, but sometimes is hard to find genuine oil. If you write "poddelka" in Cyrillic (which means "fake" in Russian) and an oil brand in youtube (examples: Motul, Total), you'll see a lot of videos about how to distinguish the fakes from originals. Unfortunately the business with fake goods (car parts, oils, clothes, shoes) around Europe and Russia is really enormous.

My OCI is 10 000km, I rarely go up to 11-12k km when at trips or when I don't have time to change it. Price is not a problem, but as mentioned, the Prius is more than 5 years old and I'm not the first owner, so don't think to invest too much in engine oil with 10k km OCI.

Read that Total is regular hydrocrack oil and there is nothing special in it (it's fine, just nothing special), but the Shell is based on GTL and has excellent cleaning properties. My engine is clean, looking from the oil cap. Lab tests show that the regular "full-synthetic" hydrocrack oils without much additives loose some/a lot of their quality after around 6 000 km (~4 000 miles) and that's why I was thinking to try Shell's gas-to-liquid oil - I haven't used this type of oil.
 
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Petronas is a (Malaysian) government wholly owned corporation.
Syntium 7000 is PAO based full synthetic, I suppose.
0W20 is not marketed locally here , but 0W40 is priced at 64 dollars, and 44 dollars on promotion sales.
 
Originally Posted By: 4md
Around here there are A LOT, really a lot of fake oils - mostly Motul, Total, Castrol, etc - the top brands in Europe and you may not believe me, but sometimes is hard to find genuine oil. If you write "poddelka" in Cyrillic (which means "fake" in Russian) and an oil brand in youtube (examples: Motul, Total), you'll see a lot of videos about how to distinguish the fakes from originals. Unfortunately the business with fake goods (car parts, oils, clothes, shoes) around Europe and Russia is really enormous.


Holy cow I watched the vid and can't tell which is the fake one (because I don't know the language). They went through a LOT of effort to make those fakes.

I'd go with the first option for oil if it meets the desired specifications. It would seem that there is less chance of it being fake too as there's less money to be made by those filthy counterfeiters!
 
$33/jug on 5-6K drains in miles?
I'd be a big PETRONAS fanboy in your case.
The oil meets the required specs and should work as well as any other.
 
Speaking about hydrocrack, I think you are smoking some of it. Crack in all forms is not good for you.
 
I extensively tested Prii at my time with Tribologik. Amsoil performed the best of all the oils we threw at them. I hate the way amsoil sells its product though.

There is better out there, however for the price Amsoil is the way to go. Get a UOA with a trusted professional that knows what he's doing.
 
Originally Posted By: burla
Speaking about hydrocrack, I think you are smoking some of it. Crack in all forms is not good for you.



Is this really called for?
 
Originally Posted By: burla
Crack in all forms is not good for you.


Unless it's on a HOT girl
wink.gif
 
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